198 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



The poet has here fallen into one little error which 

 a naturalist will perceive as readily as he himself 

 would have detected a bad rhyme or a false quantity. 

 It is only the male gnat which is adorned with 

 * feathery antlers' {antennce); and what is a very 

 remarkable fact, this male gnat never sucks blood, 

 the female alone, whose ' antlers' are not ^ fea- 

 thery,' (see the distinction in the preceding two 

 figures), being of a sanguinary disposition. Upon 

 what then, it may be asked, do the males subsist ? 

 Kirby answers, ' from the impossibility that one of 

 a million of the innumerable swarms of gnats which 

 abound in swampy places should ever taste blood, 

 it seems clear that they are usually contented with 

 vegetable aliment.'* Swammerdam also says, ^ I 

 am firmly persuaded that when the gnat has no op- 

 portunity of drawing blood out of animals, it sucks, 

 with the help of its sheath, the juices of flowers, 

 plants, or fruits, being content vvitii feeding on the 

 latter when the former is wanting. 't But these dis- 

 tinguished naturalists should have recollected, that it 

 is by no means indispensable for gnats to feed at all, 

 the diminished capacity of their stomach and bowelsj 

 requiring little or no aliment during the very few days 

 they are destined to live for the purpose of pairing and 

 continuing their race. 



Be this as it may, their pertinacity and numbers 

 frequently render them a most formidable pest. Hum- 

 boldt tells us, ^ that between the little harbour of 

 Higuerote and the mouth of the Rio Unare, the 

 wretched inhabitants are accustomed to stretch them- 

 selves on the ground, and pass the night buried in 

 the sand three or four inches deep, exposing only 

 the head, which they cover with a handkerchief § 



* Intr. i, 3S4. t Biblia Nat. i, 157. 



t See Insect Transformations, p. 201. 

 § Personal Narrative. 



